The next month passed by in a blur. Claire ended up taking a week off before her surgery, which only gave us six hour-long sessions to make as much headway as possible on the Gonar quest. It wasn’t very productive — we ended up backtracking to Brasstown to meet up with Penny, who had less useful information than I’d hoped.

She knew a lot of history, but divining the whereabouts of the armour in the present day was slightly outside her capabilities.

Because of the setback, we spent more of our limited time roaming the countryside, farming new enemies and looking for pleasant scenery.

“You better appreciate it now,” I’d told her. “Because once you have your surgery, you’ll be seeing this kind of thing every day in the real world.”

She’d chuckled and told me that her sister described her house and neighbourhood as ‘drab,’ so that probably wasn’t true.

I still checked the letterbox each morning. The clues were coming in at a steady rate, slowly tying themselves together into some kind of cohesive evidence. My best work so far was tying the audio of a tapped phone call to the voice of the supposed ‘Vlad.’ I was still waiting on the piece of evidence that would point the finger at someone other than Car-guy as being the informant, but I doubted he would accidentally leave that one out.

He seemed to enjoy having all ten of his fingers. If the vibe I’d gotten from him was correct, extremities were likely to be on the chopping block.

To avoid causing me too much concern, Claire had finally agreed to buy a Yurt. Four days after the operation, right when I’d started to think that something had gone wrong, I received a message.

[Hi. It worked.]

I’d been sitting on the couch watching Olympics reruns at the time. I leapt up, whooping and pumping my fists. I considered calling her but decided to just text. If she’d wanted to talk, she would’ve called.

[That’s amazing!!! It’s only been four days! Congrats.]

Her typing bubble sat there for a long time. I was confused for a start, before realising that her only exposure to typing would have been from sending messages in B&B. She’d still be at the stage of searching the keyboard for every letter.

[Still healing. Short messages are better. Vision blurry.]

I took a while to calm down, after that. I felt like I’d played a significant part in the journey, but I just didn’t know it until recently.

Would she have had the procedure earlier if she’d won the fight, and the Asterians paid up? Would we have completed Piliton’s quest if she hadn’t been there to pacify the Stakes?

I knew the answer to my second question was a certain ‘No.’ We might not have gotten Marla’s vote in the end, but I got the feeling that I couldn’t have handled Tabitha and Wright on my own. Wright would’ve pulverised me into next week.

The rest of my month was occupied by cooking, searching up and compiling all the different forms I’d need to sign and admin tasks I’d need to complete if we were going to establish the Pepperoni People guild, and analysing Olympic reruns.

And I was making progress.

I had to hide my ultimate plan from Mom, who was immediately curious why I’d taken an interest in the Olympics once again. I told her that I wanted to spend my recovery period in the most efficient way possible, and that watching fights and learning how other classes worked would be good preparation for the Youth Olympics. She seemed to trust me, but just in case, I interspersed a lot of normal fights in with the ones where someone would spontaneously disconnect or suddenly miss an easy win.

I was building up evidence for this faster than I was for Car-guy’s little errand.

Towards the end of the month, I wasn’t even sure that I was ready to go back into my regular B&B schedule. My main reason for returning was just that Claire had gotten the all-clear to do the same.

At least my headaches were few and far between.

A couple nights before I was set to brush the dust out of the Pod and psych myself up for my re-entry to the game, Dale brought up an interesting concept at dinner.

“You know, Esko has been itching to get you back. He keeps asking me when you’ll be getting better, and if you’ve been practicing daily and eating right. You must be coming along quite nicely in his eyes.”

I laughed through a mouthful of rice. “He just wants to spar with someone who won’t run to the Peacers after he gives them a beating. I will admit, though, his lessons have been a great help; Claire and I were hit by this debuff one time that stopped us from using any skills, and the natural kind of stability that the games gives us was totally removed. Claire could barely string an arrow.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Dale chuckled and mused over the situation. “Sounds like some kind of System Atrophy. Can be particularly nasty for players who build largely into their skills and forget to train outside of the game. Often hurts [Archers] and [Huntresses] the most, because it’s harder for them to just head out into the yard and practice.”

I nodded. With the introduction of Blade & Battle, the business for all kinds of weapons ranges and martial arts studios spiked to an absurd level of growth. Archery ranges were one of the most affected, going from a fringe hobby for kids and adults fascinated by medieval history, to a necessary training activity for a significant portion of the global population.

“Is it something that a player can inflict on someone else? I looked at the rules for the Youth Olympics — there’s a list of supplementary items that players can take into Duels, so if one of them can make people go loopy, that’d be great.”

Mom stabbed at a piece of chicken and waved it across the table at me. “Your break wasn’t that long, you know. Still a lot of ground between now and the Youth O’s. Don’t worry about it too much.”

“Yeah, I know. Just thought I’d ask.”

“Sorry kid, I dunno what might do it,” Dale replied. “Better go and interrogate whichever enemy threw it at you. Although I assume you treated them to a short interview with {The Glass Cannon}.”

Out of habit, I started nodding. Then I realised that the culprit was a young friend of mine who now spent her days building up the most prominent and well-regarded vegetable garden in Brasstown. I’d used a few of my hours that month to check in on her, and each time I did, the tavern seemed to have a new construction project going on. There were suddenly too many customers for the number of seats, so in went an expansion to the dining room. Next time, the kitchen had been renovated with all sorts of new equipment to accommodate the expanded roster of staff.

Penelope was quickly becoming somewhat of a vegetable and legume tycoon.

“You know what? That is actually a great idea.”

**************

Finally, on a Wednesday like any other, I decided to take my B&B career out from the back of the closet and brush off the grime and mothballs. Claire had called me the night before saying that she was keen to get back into the groove. I was less confident, but I knew it was just because I was getting used to hanging around and building my various cases against various bad guys. I was close to presenting my case against Blast Off! and some other vermin guilds to the Peacers.

[I can’t do a twelve-hour session, I’m afraid. Let me build back up.]

She agreed.

--Immersing, please don’t disconnect--

When I loaded in, I almost didn’t recognise my surroundings. A few things had gone down while I was away, forcing me to do several spins to get a grip on everything.

The party I’d formed with Claire was still in effect. My map showed a blue dot rushing toward me in a straight line. I had to stop and marvel at the innate speed skills Claire had as a [Huntress], somehow surpassing my speed despite what should have been a sizeable level gap.

Eventually, she came into view as she rounded an outcrop leading into the military base. At this point, we’d decided it was nearly deserted — we were yet to encounter a patrol of the external camps where our tent was, and the only signs of human life we had seen were of heavily-armed guards standing atop the walls of the central base. They stood solid, scouring the landscape and apparently not seeing us, or just not caring.

I was starting to doubt that this was the location of the armour.

Claire skittered to a stop and gave me a hug. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but I hugged her back.

“Hello!” she yelled in my ear. “It’s been ages! I can see!”

I smiled and picked up my spear and shield from where I’d hurriedly dropped them. Her haste nearly got her impaled by {The Glass Cannon}.

“It’s been forever. I felt like an unproductive lump all month cos you weren’t there to bully me into action.”

She smiled ruefully. “And now it begins anew. Drop down and give me five! And tell me where this armour set is!”

I threw my hands up. “I was kind of hoping that you’d come back with some kind of epiphany as to where it might be. I went back to visit Penny — doing great, by the way — and she didn’t have much more to tell me. Actually, she told me that Gonar was a huuuge lady’s man. But I don’t think that has anything to do with his work.”

“Hmmm. Yeah, no. No epiphanies. We can just walk.”

Seeing no better option, I agreed. There was a wide trail bending around the camp, barely encompassing the mass of uninhabited tents. It was littered with various pieces of equipment, ranging from tents pegs to cast iron pans, and I think I even saw a rudimentary top half of a wooden mannequin. The road itself would’ve been hell to drive a cart on — the loose rocks were unstable, and large enough that a wheel could slip sideways and snap a rim if the driver got unlucky.

It might’ve been intentional, built to ward off foes.

We watched the farmhouses to our left and the traffic meandering down the more compact road nearby. Brasstown, despite being largely a farming province in this age, showed remnants of its past life as a town built on mining and metal processing. As the name suggested, two large deposits of zinc and copper made the production of brass its main output, which fuelled its growth and made it useful to set up a military base here.

Penny had lots of other fun facts about the place. She told me tales of local scoundrels, one former advisor to the King who went crazy and holed himself up in a farmer’s outhouse for days, a few annual events and festivals, and some ancient town gossip that was tenable enough to be recorded in history books.

When we rounded the bend at the top of the camp, now heading east, I saw something that resembled the start of a quest. An enclosed metal wagon was on its side out on the road, the four horses tethered to the front braying wildly from their position on the ground. The poor things had been pulled down by the weight of the wagon, plus whatever it was transporting.

I glanced at Claire. “Did the game really just wait until we were both together before it made something interesting happen?”

“Looks that way. Let’s get down there before that lot gets to it.”

I looked across to where she was gesturing. A ragged group of bandits or just locals with an eye for opportunity were spreading out around the wagon, starting from the western side. From the military base, two squads of soldiers were jogging in tight formation with spears at the ready.

It was shaping up to be a battle.

“Wait, Claire. Whose side are we on?”

She shrugged and started running.

“Our own.”